The Body of Christ

St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, Gainesville FL
The Chapel of the Incarnation, Gainesville FL
June 5, 2011

Year A: The Seventh Sunday of Easter
Acts 1:6-14
Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36
1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11
John 17:1-11

The Body of Christ

Each year the Church invites us to celebrate and reflect on the story of Jesus’ Ascension. But, we can’t really talk about the Ascension without talking about Easter and without looking ahead a little bit to the great feast we’ll celebrate next week, Pentecost.

First of all, by passing through death into life, Jesus has been transformed in powerful and mysterious ways.

For example, Luke tells us that the disciples on the road to Emmaus didn’t recognize the resurrected Jesus until the breaking of the bread – followed immediately by Jesus vanishing from their sight.

But, Luke, along with Matthew and John, insists that although different and transformed, the resurrected Jesus was still the same Jesus that the disciples had known in life.

The evangelists insist the tomb was empty because Jesus had risen in the same body that had previously contained his spirit, the same body that had blessed the bread and the wine just a few days before, the same body that had been nailed to a piece of wood.

After the Emmaus story, Luke tells us that the resurrected Jesus appeared to the frightened disciples in Jerusalem saying, “Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

And then to underline the point, Luke tells us that the resurrected Jesus asks his disciples if they have anything to eat. Luke writes, “They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.”

Now, obviously, it would have been much easier and much more plausible for the first Christians to claim that beginning on Easter they began to experience the “spirit of Jesus” – that although he had died horribly on the cross, Jesus was still very much alive in their hearts.

Most people, I think, could and would buy that kind of claim.

But, Christians claimed and proclaimed something much more amazing – and much more difficult for people then and now to believe – Jesus had risen in the flesh and had appeared to his disciples.

In Luke’s sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, he tells us that the appearances of the resurrected Jesus continued for forty days – a very biblical number.

The appearances of the risen Jesus continued until, as we heard in today’s first lesson, Jesus was lifted up and vanished from sight.

Luke adds the very poignant touch of the disciples gazing up to heaven – with, I would imagine, with their mouths hanging open.

Then the two men in white robes tell the disciples to quit looking for Jesus up in the sky, adding, “This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

Now, if you’re looking for an explanation of how exactly all of this happened, I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong preacher. And, anyway, I’d be suspicious of anyone who claimed to understand or explain the Resurrection and the Ascension.

But, the point is that at the Ascension Jesus’ body has vanished from our sight so we could receive the Holy Spirit.

Jesus’ body has vanished from our sight so we can see who we really are.

Jesus’ body has vanished from our sight so we can be who we really are.

Jesus’ body has vanished so we can be the Body of Christ in the world.

St. Paul may have been the first to think in these terms – to recognize that the Church is the Body of Christ in the world. In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul wrote,
“Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”

But, for my money, the best expression of the awesome gift, responsibility and challenge of being the Body of Christ in the world comes from the 16th Century Spanish mystic, Teresa of Avila. She wrote,

Christ has no body now but yours
No hands, no feet on earth but yours
Yours are the eyes through which He looks
compassion on this world
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

The wounded and resurrected body of Jesus has vanished from our sight.

And so that means, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are the Body of Christ in the world.

That’s one of the reasons we come here - to be reminded that we are the Body of Christ in the world.

Every time we see the baptismal font – or even better every time we witness and celebrate a baptism – we are reminded that in the water of baptism we become part of the Body of Christ.

The most powerful reminder that we are the Body of Christ in the world comes every time we gather at the table and take the bread of life and the cup of salvation into our bodies – each receiving the same portion, each becoming more deeply woven into the Body of Christ in the world.

What happens here, though, is meant to strengthen us for the work of being the Body of Christ out there in a suffering and broken world.

As St. Paul recognized so clearly, each of us has our own unique part to play as a member of the Body of Christ in the world.

On Friday at our (St. Michael’s) potluck supper I was so moved when Susan talked about seeing her work combating pests that threaten crops as her vocation – particularly her goal of finding solutions affordable by poor farmers around the Caribbean, not just by a handful of wealthy international conglomerates.

Whether we’re protecting our food supply or feeding the poor downtown or donating money or simply praying for people who have no one to pray for them, we each have our own unique part to play in the Body of Christ.

But, Teresa of Avila gives us the most important general description of what it means for each of us to be members of the Body of Christ in the world.

She tells us that ours “are the eyes through which Christ looks compassion on this world.”

Ours “are the eyes through which Christ looks compassion on this world.”

“Looks compassion.” That’s a mysterious and beautiful expression, isn’t it?

During his earthly lifetime, Jesus didn’t solve every problem, didn’t fix everything and everyone that was broken.

But, Jesus “looked compassion” through love - by loving especially the outcasts, the nobodies, the hopeless, the disposable people of the First Century – the lepers, the women, the tax collectors, the children.

Instead of looking up to the sky for Jesus, we are to “look compassion” on the outcasts, the nobodies, the hopeless and disposable people of our time and place.

Instead of looking up to the sky for Jesus, we are called to be the Body of Christ right here and now in the world.

At the Ascension, Jesus’ body has vanished from our sight so we could receive the Holy Spirit.

Jesus’ body has vanished from our sight so we can see who we really are.

Jesus’ body has vanished from our sight so we can be who we really are.

Jesus’ body has vanished from our sight so we can be the Body of Christ in the world.

Amen.